Monica Lewinsky won a standing ovation from the creative elite at Cannes Lions after telling them in emotional speech to join her mission to ensure “public shaming as a blood sport must stop.”

Lewinsky appeared at the festival Thursday to deliver the Ogilvy & Inspire keynote speech after describing herself as “patient zero” of online shaming.

She told the crowd, “Like me, at 22, a few of you may also have taken wrong turns and fallen in love with the wrong person, maybe even your boss … Unlike me, though, your boss probably wasn’t the president of the United States of America.

“Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of my mistake, and I regret that mistake deeply. In 1998 after having been swept up into an improbable romance, I was then swept up into a political, legal and media maelstrom, that we had never seen before.

“This scandal was brought to you by the digital revolution … what that meant for me personally was that overnight I went from being a completely private figure, to a publicly humiliated one worldwide. I was patient zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously.”

In a speech that echoed much of her recent TED talk, Lewinsky, 41, went on to describe how “I was branded as a tart, slut, whore, bimbo, floozy and of course ‘that woman,’ I was seen by many but truly known by few … It was hard to remember ‘that woman’ had a soul and was once unbroken.

“In 1998 I lost my reputation and my dignity, I lost almost everything, and I almost lost my life.”

But Lewinsky continued that today, cyber-bullying and online shaming is more common. She discussed the death of Tyler Clemente, who committed suicide after his roommate secretly filmed him with a webcam with another man; the hacked photos of Jennifer Lawrence; Caitlyn Jenner’s struggle, and the Sony hacking scandal.

“There were moments for me when it seemed like suicide was the only way to end the ridicule … because of the headlines, my parents knew what I was going through, there was no mistaking it and no escaping it,” she said, “Today, too many parents have learned of their child’s suffering after it is too late.”

You are looking at a woman who was publicly savaged for a decade … because of who I was branded.

- Monica Lewinsky

Echoing her powerful message against cyber-bullying, and calling on the branding executives and creative leaders in the audience to help, Lewinsky said, “A marketplace has emerged where shame is a commodity and public humiliation an industry … Public shaming as a blood sport must stop. It’s time for an intervention on the Internet and in the culture. We need a return to compassion, online we have a compassion deficit, an empathy crisis.”

There was a lighter moment during her speech, when a French voice backstage could be suddenly heard through her microphone. Lewinsky quipped, “At least he wasn’t saying something nasty about me.”

She was introduced to an appreciative advertising crowd by Tham Khai Meng, worldwide chief creative officer of Ogilvy & Mather, and had earlier opened with: “If you were a brand, what brand would you be? That was a question I was asked at a job interview … let me tell you, when you are Monica Lewinsky, that’s a loaded f–king question.”

Talking to an audience familiar with nurturing and shaping brands, she said, “But can you imagine what it is like when the brand is you personally, your likeness, your name, your history, your values, your soul. That’s what happened to me in 1998. You are looking at a woman who was publicly savaged for a decade … because of who I was branded.”

She concluded, “We can lead each other to a more compassionate, more empowered place, we can help change our behavior, we can all learn from mistakes … and we can together make a society where the sometimes distancing of technology does not remove our humanity.

“You are the creative engines that will drive forward our culture. Will you help me?”